Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Mayan or Maya mythology is part in of Mesoamerican mythology and comprises all of the Maya tales in which personified forces of nature, deities, and the heroes interacting with these play the main roles.
Tonalli (see also: Tonal) plays a multiplicity of roles; acting as a day sign, body part, and a symbol of the sun's warmth. Ancient Nahua people believed that it was located in the hair and the fontanel area of one's skull, and that the tonalli provided the “vigor and energy for growth and development”. [1]
The snake was a Maya symbol of rebirth due to its habit of shedding its skin to reveal a fresher one underneath. [3] Qʼuqʼumatz thus combined the celestial characteristics of the quetzal with the serpentine underworld powers of the snake, giving him power over all levels of the Maya universe. [3]
This is a list of deities playing a role in the Classic (200–1000 CE), Post-Classic (1000–1539 CE) and Contact Period (1511–1697) of Maya religion.The names are mainly taken from the books of Chilam Balam, Lacandon ethnography, the Madrid Codex, the work of Diego de Landa, and the Popol Vuh.
Susan Milbrath, Star Gods of the Maya. University of Texas Press, Austin 1999. S.W. Miles, The Sixteenth-Century Pokom-Maya. The American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia 1957. Mary Miller and Karl Taube, An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya. Thames and Hudson, London 1993.
The Vision Serpent is an important creature in Pre-Columbian Maya mythology, although the term itself is now slowly becoming outdated. The serpent was a very important social and religious symbol, revered by the Maya. Maya mythology describes serpents as being the vehicles by which celestial bodies, such as the sun and stars, cross the heavens.
Maya codices (sg.: codex) are folding books written by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization in Maya hieroglyphic script on Mesoamerican bark paper. The folding books are the products of professional scribes working under the patronage of deities such as the Tonsured Maize God and the Howler Monkey Gods .
List of Maya numerals from 0 to 19 with underneath two vertically oriented examples. The Mayas used a positional base-twenty numerical system which only included whole numbers. For simple counting operations, a bar and dot notation was used. The dot represents 1 and the bar represents 5. A shell was used to represent zero.